The Record → Money
The Record · MoneyFinding: it costs $120 a day to hold one person, and the Board voted an 8.9% raise while the population fell.
In FY2026 the Rappahannock Regional Jail Authority spent $50,000,000 against an appropriation of $53,000,000, holding people for 400,000 local prisoner days. On January 22, 2026 its Board approved a FY’27 submission of $58,000,000 — an increase of $4,700,000, or 8.9% — in the same year local prisoner days fell 1.1%.
FY2026 General Fund (100) appropriation, revenue and expenditures; FY’27 budget submission Option #4 · Period: FY2026, 7/01/2025–6/30/2026, and the minutes of January 22, 2026 · Source: RRJA July 23, 2026 agenda packet, Revenue Summary pp. 10–19, Expenditure Summary pp. 20–36, minutes pp. 2–4, a public record of the Rappahannock Regional Jail Authority (rrj.state.va.us). Retrieved August 22, 2026. Unaudited — pending the Authority's annual audit
Figures in the writing are rounded to two digits and marked ≈. The tables, the arithmetic we show our working for, and every source line are exact, and so is every CSV. Why.
The General Fund, FY2026
| Measure | Amount |
|---|---|
| Appropriation | $53,209,301.00 |
| Revenue received, year to date | $51,561,078.96 |
| Expenditures, year to date | $50,172,124.76 |
| Encumbrances outstanding | $1,778,983.63 |
| Total assets at 6/30/2026 | $14,335,912.53 |
| Total liabilities at 6/30/2026 | $385,211.86 |
| All-fund total assets (fund 999 rollup) | $24,772,323.71 |
↓ Download CSV — revenue summary, 8 funds
↓ Download CSV — expenditure summary, 8 funds
↓ Download CSV — balance sheets, 11 funds, 6/30/2026
General Fund appropriation, revenue, expenditures, encumbrances, assets and liabilities · Period: FY2026 · Source: RRJA July 23, 2026 agenda packet, Revenue Summary pp. 10–19; Expenditure Summary pp. 20–36; Balance Sheets pp. 38–49, a public record of the Rappahannock Regional Jail Authority (rrj.state.va.us). Retrieved August 22, 2026. Unaudited — pending the Authority's annual audit
Cost per person per day — computed
This figure is ours, not the Authority's. It is one division, and here it is:
$50,000,000 ÷ 400,000 days = $120 per local prisoner day
$50,000,000 ÷ 1,100 average daily population = $45,000 per person per year
Computed by Uncage RRJ from FY2026 expenditures (Expenditure Summary, pp. 20–36, unaudited) and audited local prisoner days (Local Prisoner Day Report, p. 9). It counts total General Fund spending against local days only, so it includes the cost of holding federal and state detainees. Federal days are reported separately below; add 20,000 federal inmate days and the denominator rises by 5%.
What families paid, and what was budgeted for them to pay
Six General Fund revenue lines are paid by incarcerated people and the people who love them: the phone, the tablet, the commissary, the food order, the video visit. Together they brought in $2,300,000 in FY2026 against $1,400,000 budgeted.
RRJA-2026-07-23-revenue-summary.csv,
Fund 100 accounts 0005, 0006, 0014, 0015, 0016 and 0017.| Revenue line | Acct | Budgeted | Received YTD | Share of budget |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inmate Telephone | 0005 | $875,000 | $1,367,029.09 | 156.2% |
| Commissary | 0006 | $350,000 | $521,853.54 | 149.1% |
| Inmate Phone-Time Purchase | 0014 | $100,000 | $218,823.00 | 218.8% |
| Inmate Food Purchase - Commission | 0015 | $100,000 | $119,063.28 | 119.1% |
| At-Home Video Visitation Fee | 0016 | $0 | $44.90 | — |
| Tablet Commission | 0017 | $0 | $35,785.72 | — |
| Total | $1,425,000 | $2,262,599.53 | 158.8% |
↓ Download CSV — revenue summary, all lines
Computed: $2,262,599.53 ÷ 403,522 local prisoner days = $5.61 extracted per person per day; ÷ 1,105.34 average daily population = $2,046.97 per person per year; and 4.39% of all General Fund revenue received. The Commissary Fund (750) separately took in $685,450.50 against $659,095.00 in expenses, a margin of $26,355.50.
Inmate Telephone, Commissary, Inmate Phone-Time Purchase, Inmate Food Purchase Commission, At-Home Video Visitation Fee and Tablet Commission revenue · Period: FY2026 · Source: RRJA July 23, 2026 agenda packet, Revenue Summary pp. 10–19, Fund 100; Commissary Fund 750, a public record of the Rappahannock Regional Jail Authority (rrj.state.va.us). Retrieved August 22, 2026. Unaudited — pending the Authority's annual audit
$3.00 a call. $15 for twenty-five minutes of a face.
Those are the jail’s own published prices, and this table is what they add up to across a year. What we can tell you is where the cheaper routes are, what mail costs and where it actually goes, and how to put money on an account without paying a fee twice.
Calls, visits, mail and money — what each one costs and how it works
The FY’27 raise, invoice by invoice
Option #4, approved in the January 22, 2026 minutes: $58,000,000, up $4,700,000 or 8.9% over FY’26. Here is what each locality was told it owes.
| Locality | Operational | Debt service | Net change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stafford | +$1,398,975 | +$91,264 | +$1,490,239 |
| Fredericksburg | +$996,322 | −$877,859 | +$118,463 |
| Spotsylvania | +$569,328 | +$590,555 | +$1,159,883 |
| King George | +$125,503 | +$176,134 | +$301,637 |
| Total | +$3,090,128 | −$19,906 | +$3,070,222 |
Computed: the four operational impacts sum to $3,090,128 and the four debt-service changes net to −$19,906. Fredericksburg's debt service falls $877,859 while its operational share rises $996,322. The source heading reads “FY’26 Budget Submission” over FY’27 content and prints “$877,859decrease” without a space; both errors are preserved in our extraction rather than silently corrected.
FY’27 budget submission Option #4 and locality operational and debt-service impacts · Period: FY2027 submission, approved January 22, 2026 · Source: RRJA July 23, 2026 agenda packet, minutes pp. 2–4, a public record of the Rappahannock Regional Jail Authority (rrj.state.va.us). Retrieved August 22, 2026. Unaudited — pending the Authority's annual audit
Federal business
The Authority also rents beds. Federal billing for the trailing twelve months Jul/25–Jun/26 totaled $2,100,000, up $110,000 — 5.7% — from $2,000,000 for May/25–Apr/26. Overhead recovery was $710,000 across 20,000 federal inmate days.
RRJA-2026-07-23-federal-billing-12-month.csv, packet pp. 53–55. The lamp bar
is the peak month, May 2026. June 2026's $190,000 was
80.67% Bureau of Prisons.↓ Download CSV — federal billing, rolling 12 months
↓ Download CSV — federal overhead recovery and federal days
Computed: $705,879.01 ÷ 20,047 federal inmate days = $35.21 recovered per federal day, against our computed $124.34 General Fund cost per local day. The source memo reports no amount and no days for June 2026 while still printing a full-year total; that gap is carried through, not filled.
Federal contract billing, federal overhead recovery and federal inmate days · Period: FY2026 · Source: RRJA July 23, 2026 agenda packet, Superintendent memo p. 37 dated July 13, 2026; pie charts pp. 50–52; bar charts pp. 53–55, a public record of the Rappahannock Regional Jail Authority (rrj.state.va.us). Retrieved August 22, 2026. Unaudited — pending the Authority's annual audit
One hundred twenty-four dollars and thirty-four cents.
That is the daily wage they pay the cage to keep him,
and the same house charges his mother five dollars and sixty-one cents a day for the privilege of hearing his voice.
Two million two hundred sixty-two thousand five hundred ninety-nine dollars and fifty-three cents,
collected off phone calls and candy bars from people whose whole crime was loving somebody inside.
They budgeted one million four hundred twenty-five thousand and came in over.
Then in January, with the rooms emptier than the year before, fifty-one souls at that table voted themselves eight point eight eight nine percent more.
Brothers, they did not miss the number. They made it.
Move or Be Moved.
Musings of Sir Paul the Apostle · written for this page's figures, August 22, 2026
Tell us where the money families paid actually goes.
- The ask
- Publish, in the next Board packet, which fund each of the six inmate-and-family revenue lines is deposited into and what that fund may be spent on — and produce the telephone, tablet and commissary contracts with their commission schedules. Nobody has to file anything for that; the Authority could publish them tomorrow. Until it does, where this money lands is not disputed. It is unknown.
- Who it goes to
- Santina Thelen, FOIA Officer, and Col. Kevin Hudson, Superintendent, Rappahannock Regional Jail Authority; copied to the Boards of Supervisors of Stafford, Spotsylvania and King George and the Fredericksburg City Council, who appropriate the money.
- Where it can be said out loud
- The next quarterly Authority Board meeting, Roll Call Room at the jail; public comment at the start. The next noticed date is on Act as soon as the Authority publishes it.